Tina Chang
Tina Chang (born 1969) is an American poet, teacher, and editor. Life Chang was born in Oklahoma to Chinese immigrants who had met in Montreal, where her mother was working as a nurse and her father was earning his doctorate in physics. The family moved to New York City when she was a year old. During her youth, Chang and her brother were sent to live in Taiwan with relatives for 2 years. “I started questioning even at a very young age, well, what is language?” she said. “What is the role of words?” Elissa Gootman, "A Poet Who Doesn't Do Lofty," New York Times, March 19, 2010. She later attended Binghampton University. A professor at Binghamton was the first to say, “I really think that you can be a poet.” in her junior year. She was flattered but unsure what that meant, so she pursued a string of typical English-major jobs: teaching, advertising, publishing. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she studied with Lucie Brock-Broido, Lucille Clifton, Alfred Corn, Mark Doty and Richard Howard. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Hunter College. Along with poets Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, she is the co-editor of Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, Norton, 2008. Her new collection of poetry, Of Gods & Strangers, will be published in 2011. Her work has appeared in numerous journals such as McSweeney's and Ploughshares.http://www.pshares.org/authors/author-detail.cfm?authorID=1935 She has held residencies at MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Artist's Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Fundacion Valparaiso, Ragdale, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. Recognition Chang was elected Poet laureate of Brooklyn, New York, in 2010.http://www.brooklyn-usa.org/pages/poetry/BrooklynPoetLaureate.htm http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1188 She has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation/Money for Women, and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Poets & Writers and The Academy of American Poets. She has also won a Dana Award for poetry. She was a finalist for an Asian American Literary Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, for Half-Lit Houses. Publications Poetry *''Half-Lit Houses''. New York: Four-Way Books, 2004. *''Of Gods and Strangers''. New York: Four-Way Books, 2011. Edited *''Language for a New Century: Contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and beyond'' (edited with Nathalie Handal & Ravi Shankar). New York: Norton, 2008. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Tina Chang, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Sep. 7, 2015. Anthologized *''Poetry 30: Poets in their thirties''. MAMMOTH Books, 2005. *''Asian American Poetry: The next generation''. University of Illinois Press, 2004 *''Asian American Literature''. McGraw-Hill, 2001 *''Identity Lessons''. Penguin, 1999. See also *Category:Asian-American poets * List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems *Tina Chang profile & 8 poems at the Academy of American Poets. *[http://www.guernicamag.com/poetry/436/three_poems_3/ "Strange Theater"; "Wild Invention"; "Imagine, Refugee", Guernica, November 2007] *poems ;Prose *Why I Write, Publishers Weekly *Poetry Society of America, Q & A: American Poetry ;Audio / video *Tina Chang at YouTube *audio recordings of Tina Chang's poems at From the Fishhouse *audio recordings of Tina Chang's poems at The Drunken Boat *Audio recording: Tina Chang at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008 ;Books *Tina Chang at Amazon.com ;About *"A Poet Who Doesn't Do Lofty," New York Times *Tina Chang Official website. *Official Press Release, BP Markowitz Names Tina Chang of Park Slope as Poet Laureate of Brooklyn *Brooklyn's New Poet Laureate Wants to Weave Poetry into Residents' Lives *Brooklyn Poet Laureate Envisions Outreach into Brooklyn Communities *A Conversation with Tina Chang at Lantern Review, 2012 Category:American poets Category:American writers of Chinese descent Category:American people of Taiwanese descent Category:People from New York Category:Writers from New York Category:1969 births Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Living people Category:American women writers Category:21st-century poets Category:21st-century women writers Category:State University of New York at Binghampton alumni Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets Category:Chinese-American poets